How hard is it to rent if you have kids?

Renting can be competitive and landlords can be wary of tenants with dependents. So how do parents fare?

Just how hard is it to rent with children?

High demand areas

It’s difficult to secure rental properties in popular suburbs and having children can decrease your chances of finding that dream rental property in these areas.

“I found it impossible to get a look in while living in Adelaide with three kids. I moved to the country and have found it much easier to find rentals here,” Jane Smith from Adelaide says.

Finding a rental property as a parent in a popular area isn’t always easy.

In high-demand suburbs where competition is fierce, most landlords are going to choose the tenant that is the most likely to pay their rent promptly and not damage the property.

Of the landlords interviewed for this article, most say they are more likely to choose a single, six-figure earner, over the age of forty who does not have children and pets. When the competition is fierce, parents can miss out.

Market matters

Demographics can also play a role as Ava Lyons from Canberra has discovered, having rented over a dozen houses with her son. She says it’s never been an issue, even in Canberra’s notoriously difficult rental market.

Yet in the inner-city suburbs of cities like Sydney and Melbourne, Lyons could find it harder to find a place to rent as there are more high-income earning renters with few responsibilities. However in family-centric Canberra, Lyons becomes a much more desirable rental candidate.

“I have never had trouble renting homes because of my son. I have a dog and I’m a low-income earner and these are much bigger issues when I apply for rentals,” Lyons says.

Some landlords prefer tenants with older children.

Lyons suspects that as her son is older, it’s made it easier. Most of the landlords interviewed for this article believe that an average ten year-old is likely to cause far less damage to a home than a toddler.

Kate Single from the Sunshine Coast hasn’t been as lucky as Lyons. She’s been searching for a rental close to the school her children attend, but every application she has submitted has been denied.

“I’ve applied for quite a few properties and I had one honest real estate agent tell me that the owners prefer working couples over single mums,” Single says.

What worries landlords

Many rental properties are owned by people who want to live in them in the future, so they tend to be careful about selecting tenants.

In her career as a real estate agent, Roberts says she has seen some damage done to properties by young families.

“The most common damage includes stained carpets, damage to walls, bent clotheslines and broken horizontal blinds. It’s also quite typical for parents to make child-friendly adjustments to rental homes such as drilling holes in cabinets to attach child safety clips and fittings,” she says.

Some landlords fear that renting a property to a young family could cost them more.

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According to Roberts, it can also be difficult to get families to pay repair money as the ‘normal wear and tear’ clauses included in most rental agreements can be vague. This can mean that landlords are stuck paying for repairs that could have been avoided if they had chosen not to rent their property to a young family.

In Roberts experience as a real estate agent and landlord, she maintains that it is more difficult to rent when you have children.

“I personally have two rental properties and I let both tenants have pets. I chose this over applications with kids,” she says.

Why parents are great tenants

Most landlords interviewed for this article would prefer to have an older, single, high-income earner living in their property than a family, but most landlords would also much prefer to rent their home to a family rather than a group of singles.

David Traeger from DT Property recommends landlords rent to families.

“It’s good to have families with children because they generally stay in the property longer which maximises the investor’s return due to lower turnover and less vacancy between tenants. This is because the kids are usually enrolled in the local schools or sports clubs and parents don’t like uprooting them,” he says.

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